Because it isn't a dark pattern. It's market segmentation, and, contrary to popular belief, market segmentation has two goals, not just one: yes, it soaks price-insensitive customers, but it also provides relief for price-sensitive customers.
"Needs SSO integration" is one of the cleanest market seg signals available to a SAAS startup. Customers that really want SSO integration are overwhelmingly large enough to stop obsessing about SAAS seat costs. What's better, this extremely desirable cohort of customer prospects is increasingly mandated, as a cohort, to seek SSO integration.
A frequent cynical (and, justified) question asked about new services appearing on Hacker News is "where do they make their money?". You know, "if you're not the customer, you're the product"? Well: this is one very straightforward way companies manage to have generous free or cheap tiers.
We're not going to charge extra for SSO integration; we're SAAS customers ourselves, and the sso.tax is, obviously, super annoying. And you can take this idea way too far --- as you would be if you charged extra for 2FA. But "dark pattern" doesn't mean "everything we find super annoying in business". I absolutely understand why SAAS companies tax SSO.
"Needs SSO integration" is one of the cleanest market seg signals available to a SAAS startup. Customers that really want SSO integration are overwhelmingly large enough to stop obsessing about SAAS seat costs. What's better, this extremely desirable cohort of customer prospects is increasingly mandated, as a cohort, to seek SSO integration.
A frequent cynical (and, justified) question asked about new services appearing on Hacker News is "where do they make their money?". You know, "if you're not the customer, you're the product"? Well: this is one very straightforward way companies manage to have generous free or cheap tiers.
We're not going to charge extra for SSO integration; we're SAAS customers ourselves, and the sso.tax is, obviously, super annoying. And you can take this idea way too far --- as you would be if you charged extra for 2FA. But "dark pattern" doesn't mean "everything we find super annoying in business". I absolutely understand why SAAS companies tax SSO.